After seeing the comments of Ryan Kesler and Canucks head coach Alain Vigneault following Wednesday’s practice, the one thing you know for sure is they wouldn’t make very good partners in a game of charades.
One looks at an object and says it’s black. The other looks at the same thing and says white.
That’s certainly the case when it comes to the possible return of the multi-talented centre to the NHL team’s lineup after off-season surgery to his left shoulder and left wrist.
Kesler, who was cleared for “light contact” on Sunday and returned to regular practice with the team for the first time, is on the current two-game road trip that concludes tonight in Minnesota.
Following practice on Wednesday, Kesler – as he and his agent, Kurt Overhardt, have taken pains to emphasize all along since the May 8 shoulder labrum surgery – reiterated he is taking a stepped approach to a return to playing and won’t until he’s absolutely ready. He was careful to dampen any thoughts that he might he in the lineup soon. He’s admitted he returned too quickly from off-season hip surgery the previous season and was never really able to catch up to his game as a result.
When Kesler was in town last June to shoot a public service announcement on behalf of the B.C. Society of Transition Houses, he told me:
“I’m going to take the full (amount of time needed) and just get to 100 per cent and make sure I’m not playing catch-up. For me, mentally I’m in that state of mind and last year I wasn’t. Probably it was the ‘man of steel’ vibe, where I can get through anything. This time, I know (that’s) not fun. I’m going to wait the full time.”
It sounded like Kesler was sticking to his guns this week in Minny.
“I’ve had a couple of good days of practice and I’m just going from there,” he told The Province’s Ben Kuzma. “There are areas out there where I don’t feel comfortable, so there’s no timeline at all. Until I feel that comfort level and feel I can step in and contribute the way I can, I’ll be playing then.”
There’s more, in case you were mildly encouraged by that.
“The wrist gets achy once in a while, but nothing out of the ordinary. The shoulder is the biggest thing. I have to make sure it’s 100 per cent and the range of motion is there, but strength isn’t there at all. Once we get home, I’m really going to hammer that and take it day by day.”
Doesn’t sound like a guy who’s going to play next week.
But you wouldn’t know it from Vigneault’s take.
“To me, he looks real good on the ice and doing everything out there that a player can possibly do,” said AV. “I’m not sure exactly where they are on the medical side. I don’t get involved until a player comes to me and the medical staff has cleared him to play. I don’t know what to tell you. On the ice, it doesn’t look like baby steps. It looks like leaps and bounds.”
Doesn’t this sound oddly reminiscent of last season, when Kesler declared his hip to be 100 per cent when he returned in mid-October – though he admitted later he wasn’t ready.
Kesler ’s return was welcomed by the coach, at that time, in this way:
“Ryan came to see me [Monday] morning and told me he was 100 per cent ready to go,” Vigneault said. “He assured me the injury was behind him and we weren’t going to see him limping and we weren’t going to see any ‘pain faces.’ He’s ready to go and we’re going to put him in.”
Of course, coaches always want difference-making players back in the lineup ASAP. But that was then and this is now, especially after Vigneault’s comments following the team’s early playoff exit when he said Kesler’s February shoulder injury really didn’t factor into his offensive decline.
For that reason — and others — don’t expect history to repeat itself.

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